The Turnaround by George Pelecanos Read Free Book Online Page B

they figured it was something about Pete being smarter than the bouncer. Being tossed had been momentarily embarrassing, but none of them felt bad about it for long. It had been fun watching the sparks fly off that dude’s chest, hearing Billy’s cackle of a laugh as the guy balled his fists but didn’t step forward, Billy not giving a good fuck about anything, which was his way.
    They drove around some more and drank beer. They thought about going to the Silver Slipper, but the club had a drink minimum and enforced it, and anyway, the Slipper featured burlesque dancers, and burlesque to them meant the ladies didn’t show snatch and took their time about showing bare tit. They ended up buying tickets to a movie called The Teachers, down at 9th and F, at a theater called the Art, which was the wrong name for the place because it was just a stroke house. In the auditorium, which smelled of tobacco, perspiration, and damp newspapers, they sat apart from one another so no one would think they were like that and watched the movie and the older guys in the audience who moaned while they jacked off. Alex got an erection but nothing like the strong one he got while making out with Karen, and thinking of her made him lonely and sad to be where he was. The other guys must have been feeling something like that, too, since they mutually decided to leave before the end of the film. On the way to the car they joked about the fact that all the girl characters were named Uta.
    They drove over to Shaw. The beer was warm now, but they continued to drink it. At 14th and S they talked about the time they had bought a whore on that corner for Pete’s sixteenth birthday, a rite of passage for boys in the D.C. area, and joked with Pete about how he had shot off the second he got inside her. In fact, he had blown his load on the dirty sheets of the bed in a tiny third-floor row house room before he had the opportunity to insert his pecker, but he hadn’t related this to his friends. It was bad enough that he had lost his cherry to a black hooker named Shyleen. These guys were the only ones who knew that he had done this thing, and the story would die with their friendship. He would be gone in a year, off to college and a new life. It couldn’t come fast enough.
    “Remember when we gave her the fifteen dollars?” said Billy. “Right out on the street? She said, ‘Put that money away; you tryin to get me ’rested?’ ”
    Alex had been there. The girl had said “arrested,” not “ ’rested.”
    “What do you expect from a boofer?” said Billy.
    “Don’t talk about your mama like that,” said Pete.
    At U Street, they started up the long hill, going north. From U up to Park Road, the commercial and residential district had been burned and virtually destroyed in the riots. What was left was boarded and charred. Many businesses that had managed to remain standing had closed and moved on.
    “Man, did they fuck this up,” said Pete.
    “Wonder where the people who lived here went,” said Alex.
    “They all out in Nee-grow Heights,” said Billy.
    “How do you know, you been out there?” said Pete.
    “Your daddy has,” said Billy.
    “’Cause you’re always talking about it,” said Pete. “When you gonna stop talking and do it?”
    Billy, Pete, and Alex lived a few miles from Heathrow Heights, but they knew of it only by reputation and had not come into contact with its residents. The black kids who lived there were bused to a high school in the wealthier section of Montgomery County whose white students were bound for college, while the boys who went to the high school in down-county Silver Spring were known to be an unpolished mixture of stoners, greasers, and jocks, with a few closet academics in the mix.
    “What, you think I’m afraid to go there?” said Billy. “ I’m not afraid.”
    Billy was afraid. Of this Alex was certain. Like Billy’s old man, who told nigger jokes on the steps of their church, where everyone